Top Items:
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
Doomed: why Wikipedia will fail — A cyberlaw professor argues that Wikipedia is doomed. The online encyclopedia will need to choose between being “high quality” and “open,” but both choices are fraught with risk. — Law professor Eric Goldman loves Wikipedia, but he's also convinced …
Discussion:
Between the Lines
Michael Liedtke / Associated Press:
Facebook appraisal pegs company's value at $3.7B — Facebook Inc. quickly concluded it wasn't worth anywhere near the $15 billion market value implied in a 2007 investment made by Microsoft Corp., according to confidential information obtained Wednesday from court documents.
RELATED:
Caroline McCarthy / The Social:Facebook valuation ‘shocker’ another reason to be skeptical of media hype
Discussion:
TG Daily
Wilson Rothman / Gizmodo:
Garmin-Asus Nuvifone M20: A Surprisingly Cute WinMo 6.1 GPS Phone — Garmin-Asus will launch the M20, a Windows Mobile 6.1 phone, sometime this year. True to the name, this cute touchscreen handset comes with car dock and a full set of GPS maps for deep-country use.
Discussion:
eWeek, NEWSFACTOR, Garmin-Asus, CNET News, Engadget, The Apple Core, Gearlog, MobileCrunch, SlashPhone, Boy Genius Report and Electronista
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Alex Chitu / Google Operating System:
Download and Buy Videos from YouTube — YouTube includes a new section for “My Videos”: a list of purchased videos. A YouTube help page has more details about the new feature: … Videos are available to download in the MP4 format and some of them can be downloaded for free and they're …
Discussion:
Search Engine Watch, VentureBeat, WebProNews, Macworld, Lifehacker and Obsessable, Thanks:labnol
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Latest Adrian's Rojak Pot Updates:
The Microsoft Windows 7 Upgrade Program Rev. 2.1 — The Microsoft Windows 7 Upgrade Program — Microsoft issued a draft of the Windows 7 Technical Guarantee Program to their OEM partners on December 10, giving them exactly one month to provide their feedback before Microsoft finalizes the program details.
Discussion:
Engadget, SlashGear, Boing Boing Gadgets, Lifehacker, Maximum PC all, CrunchGear, Neowin.net, TweakTown News, bit-tech.net and Slashdot
RELATED:
Wall Street Journal:
More Tech Start-Ups Call It Quits — As Funding Dries Up, Fledgling Silicon Valley Firms Are Shutting Down; Fears of Chill on Innovation — The deepening recession is speeding up the shakeout in Silicon Valley, forcing droves of start-ups to shut down or sell themselves at fire-sale prices.
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
Android Vulnerability So Dangerous, Users Warned Not to Use Phone's Web Browser — Over the weekend at the Schmoocon hacker conference in Washington D.C., security researcher Charlie Miller presented a new vulnerability in Google's mobile OS Android which allows hackers to remotely …
Wall Street Journal:
Facebook, Nokia Discuss Alliance — Battle Over Social-Networking Users Extends Into Cellphone Market — Facebook Inc. is stepping up its efforts to integrate its social network into an array of mobile phones, including those made by Nokia Corp., the world's largest handset maker.
Discussion:
last100, MediaFile, GigaOM, Mashable!, BoomTown, SlashGear, FierceMobileContent, The Social, paidContent.org, Phone Scoop, Music Ally, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, Bloomberg and All Facebook
Benjamin Grol / Gmail Blog:
Four changes to Gmail contacts — Over the past few days we've made a lot of small changes to Gmail's contact manager which, combined, should make it easier to organize the contacts you want and get rid of some of the cruft. Here's a quick summary: — 1. Contact merge (and an important caveat about auto-complete)
Zach Spear / AppleInsider:
Apple Stores shifting focus to software in bid for switchers — Apple plans to rearrange the layout of its retail stores to place a greater emphasis on its consumer software offerings in an effort to convert even more customers to the Mac. — ifoAppleStore claims that the front section …
RELATED:
Nokia Beta Labs blog:
Contacts on Ovi beta database failed - my deepest and most sincere apologies — Written by: Kristian Luoma, Product Manager, Contacts on Ovi. — Hey, — Something bad happened yesterday. A cooler broke down in the hosting center that we run the Chat service in.
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
Innovative iPhone Developer Smule Raises $3.9 Million — Smule is one of our favorite iPhone developers - besides putting together ridiculously addictive apps like Ocarina (iTunes Link), the team is also especially adept at tapping into the iPhone's network effect, even on something as basic as a virtual lighter.
Discussion:
VentureBeat
Saul Hansell / Bits:
Broadband Tax Credit Cut From Stimulus Bill — It looks like the tax credit for companies that install new broadband service was cut from the latest version of the economic stimulus bill. The bill still would award more than $6 billion in grants to help build high-speed Internet service, mainly in rural areas.
RELATED:
Tim Mullaney / Bloomberg:
Redpoint Tells Startups to Cut Staff Up to 10% Amid Lack of IPOs, Mergers — Feb. 12 (Bloomberg) — Redpoint Ventures, the venture- capital firm that backed MySpace Inc., is tightening funding and telling its startups to cut their staffs by as much as 10 percent to cope with a drought of mergers and initial public offerings.
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MG Siegler / VentureBeat:
Skyfire integrates an activity stream with Twitter, Facebook and feed support — Skyfire, the mobile browser which touts itself as translating the desktop web browsing experience to mobile phones, has a useful new feature today: Activity streams. The browser now has a default area which allows …
Tarmo Virki / Reuters:
Google plans data centre at old Finnish paper mill — * Stora sells old paper plant to Google — * Google says plans to open data centre at site (Releads, adds Google comments) — Google (GOOG.O) said on Thursday it aimed to build a data centre at an old paper mill in southeastern Finland …
Discussion:
TechCrunch, Search Engine Land, paidContent, Data Center Knowledge, Stora Enso, Computerworld, Beyond Search and BuzzMachine
Tarmo Virki / Reuters:
Qualcomm, HP, MySpace to join Symbian camp — HELSINKI (Reuters) - Qualcomm (QCOM.O), MySpace (NWSA.O) and 12 more companies joined the Symbian camp on Thursday, giving the mobile operating system larger scale than Google's (GOOG.O) Android in the handset software battleground.
John Leyden / The Register:
MS puts up $250K bounty for Conficker author — Zombie masterminds wanted undead or alive — Microsoft is offering a $250,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the virus writers behind the infamous Conficker (Downadup) worm.
Discussion:
TechFlash
Robin Goad / Hitwise Intelligence:
The Telegraph: how to pick up traffic from Digg — The Telegraph recently ran an excellent story that included our recent Twitter data. While reading the article I noticed the Digg widget illustrated in the picture below on the newspaper's homepage. Launched last October it lists …
Discussion:
WebProNews
PC World:
Skype Growing by 380,000 Users a Day — Ross O. Storey, CIO Asia — The number of its users is growing by the population of Singapore (more than four million) every 12 days and nearly a third of its registered subscribers now use it for business purposes.
Mark Hendrickson / TechCrunch:
Nightlife Application Breaks Away From Facebook, Tries To Stand On Its Own Two Feet — The Scene, a new social network geared towards improving your nightlife, is making its public debut at the Twiistup 5 event in Santa Monica, CA today. After three months in beta, the company is announcing …
PR Newswire:
Netflix Passes 10 Million Subscribers, With 600,000 Net Additions Since the First of the Year — Netflix, Inc. , the world's largest online movie rental service, today announced it has surpassed 10 million subscribers, a milestone that reflects the widespread and growing appeal of the company's service.
Esteban Israel / Reuters:
Cuba launches own Linux variant to counter U.S. — HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba launched its own variant of the Linux computer operating system this week in the latest front of the communist island's battle against what it views as U.S. hegemony. — The Cuban variant, called Nova …
